M83 - 'Reunion Remixes'

M83
Reunion Remix EP

Mute, 2012

• Favorites:

  Polly Scattergood, White Sea

• COMPLETE THE LOOK:

  Fuzzy Sweaters, Glasses, Tic Tacs

RATING:

TRACK LIST:

• Reunion (Album version)
• Reunion (The Naked and the Famous remix)
• Reunion (Sei A remix)
• Reunion (Polly Scattergood remix)
• Reunion (Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. remix)
• Reunion (Mylo remix)
• Reunion (White Sea remix)

“Reunion,” the second single from M83’s second album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, is a straight-A student of a song: successful and likeable enough, but maybe just a little a bit too perfect. Here it gets the royal treatment from six different producers, who each pervert it a little differently.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.’s remix gets obsessed with the droning background vocal tracks, blowing them up and looping them endlessly--like hitting on someone by constantly telling them how great their worst feature is. A sort of sexy optimism bordering on delusion. They cleverly dig up harmonies that aren’t in the original track, and use them as rails to steady a kind of breezy, neon, basement dance-pop, turning Anthony Gonzalez’s caterwaul into a Christmas ornament.

Naked and Famous drive across the country with the song to go to Burning Man and get stoned and get lost in the desert, layering acoustic guitars, piano, and mumbling voices and thumping drums that slowly hint at their destination, building up before breaking the song wide open into an epic anthem, screeching and streaming, overwhelmed with feeling.

Mylo takes the song to a nightclub in Miami and mixes vodka with 80s metal synths. The almost annoying guitar from the original is clipped and appreciated into submission. It deftly turns indie pop into dance pop, better drums and better bass. More funk, more attention, a better sound system. Higher heels and shorter skirts, and much better hair.

Polly Scattergood has by far the best remix here, coming on slow, sexy and weird like a teenager on mushrooms babysitting her kid brother. She makes a totally new song from the original; you forget what you’re listening to. Gonzalez is turned into a bratty little child, whiny, and it works. Polly knows that all indie boys want to be humiliated, and she slows the song down like pulling down his pants and pointing and laughing.

Sei A bring some techno sophistication to the song, twisting its chord progressions into something slightly sinister, like a guy with greasy slicked-back hair at a bar. A little creepy, but still sexy--the way that cheap champagne combined with cheap cocaine feels somehow so classy. Like a rented limo. White Sea literally pump the song full of dynamite and blow it up. They explode “Reunion” into a sort of dubstep carbomb. The song’s frantic energy is tamed, sublimated, as if by hypnosis. White Sea get the song to bark like a dog.